Phusion Passenger is an Apache and Nginx module for deploying Ruby web applications. It has a strong focus on ease of use, stability and performance. Phusion Passenger is built on top of tried-and-true, battle-hardened Unix technologies, yet at the same time introduces innovations not found in most traditional Unix servers. Since version 3.0 it can also run standalone without an external web server, making it not only easier for first-time users but also ideal on development environments.

Recent changes

For this release, we’d like to give our thanks to the Brazilian community for donating money to support Phusion Passenger development. This donation has been made possible with the help of Egenial.

Phusion Passenger is under constant maintenance and development. We are pleased to announce Phusion Passenger version 3.0.5. This is a bug fix release.

[Apache] Fixed Union Station process statistics collection

Union Station users that are using Apache may notice that no process information show up in Union Station. This is because of a bug in Phusion Passenger’s Apache version, which has now been fixed.

[Apache] PassengerAnalytics has been renamed to UnionStationSupport

This option has been renamed for consistency reasons.

[Nginx] passenger_analytics has been renamed to union_station_support

This option has been renamed for consistency reasons.

Fixed Union Station data sending on older libcurl versions

Some Union Station users have reported that their data don’t show up. Upon investigation this turned out to be a compatibility with older libcurl versions. Affected systems include all RHEL 5 based systems, such as RHEL 5.5 and CentOS 5.5. We’ve now fixed compatibility with older libcurl versions.

People who host a lot of different applications on Phusion Passenger may notice that it sometimes spawns more processes than is allowed by PassengerMaxPoolSize/passenger_max_pool_size. This has been fixed.

How do I upgrade to 3.0.5?

Via a gem

First install the gem with the following command:

gem install passenger

If you’re using Phusion Passenger for Apache or for Nginx, then re-run the Apache or Nginx module installer, whichever is appropriate:

passenger-install-apache2-module
passenger-install-nginx-module

At the end the installer will tell you to paste a configuration snippet into your web server config file. Replace the old snippet that you already had with this new one.

Via Ubuntu packages

John Leach from Brightbox has kindly provided Ubuntu packages for Phusion Passenger. The package is available from the Brightbox repository which you can find at:

http://apt.brightbox.net

Add the following line to the Third Party Software Sources:

deb http://apt.brightbox.net hardy main

(The simplest way to do that is to create a file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ containing the deb instruction, and then run ‘apt-get update’).

Once you’ve done this then you can install Phusion Passenger by running:

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-passenger

-or-

sudo apt-get install nginx-brightbox

(Note that John is currently packaging 3.0.5, so it might take a while before this release shows up in the apt repository.)

Via RedHat/CentOS packages

YUM repositories with RPMs are maintained by Erik Ogan and Stealthy Monkeys Consulting. Please note that Erik is currently packaging 3.0.5, so it might take a while before this release shows up in the yum repositories.

Step 1: install the release package

The easiest way to install Phusion Passenger and keep it up to date is to install the passenger-release package from the main repository:

“Phusion” and “Phusion Passenger” are registered trademarks of Phusion. “Rails”, “Ruby on Rails” and the Rails logo are registered trademarks of David Heinemeier Hansson. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.